2023 Landscape Industry Trends Survey
On the move landscape trends to better prepare you and your landscape business for growth and profitability in the years ahead.
Use LMN software to find ways to reduce costs and increase profitability.
Landscaping businesses are preparing to grow revenue in 2023 while dealing with key challenges like economic uncertainty, seasonality, and industry-wide labor shortages. But, with limited time and resources, it can be stressful to know what strategies will move the needle.
To help you benchmark against the competition and identify focus areas, we polled 450 landscaping professionals across North America. We asked how businesses performed last year, what key challenges they’re facing and where landscape business owners see growth opportunities. We also asked what proactive steps they’re taking to prepare for the year ahead.
In this report, we’ll dive into the survey results and uncover key insights that can help you create a more efficient and profitable business in 2023.
Landscape Industry Challenges: Year In Review
2022 was a positive year of growth for the landscaping industry as 96% of landscapers we polled increased yearly revenue, and nearly a quarter grew their revenue by 20-50%.
It’s an encouraging outcome for the industry considering the challenges the industry has faced in the past few years due to the pandemic. What’s keeping them up at night? Sixty-nine percent say rising costs are a growth challenge, and 84% are struggling to find qualified labor. Other challenges included managing cash flow, finding and maintaining equipment and competition from competitors.
Landscape Industry Challenges:
- Difficulty finding qualified labor – 84%
- Rising costs – 69%
- Competition from lower priced competitors – 28%
- Acquiring and maintaining equipment – 23%
- Challenges managing company cashflow – 22%
- Competition from larger, more established companies – 4%
*Participants were able to provide more than one answer.
Will The Landscape Industry Solve The Labor Shortage?
Getting around labor shortage continues to be a large obstacle as half of landscaping businesses surveyed (51%) said they’re unable to find or hire enough staff to fill vacant positions. While that’s a staggering number, it’s a substantial decrease from last year’s survey where 92% said they struggled to find reliable employees.
In addition to hiring, retaining employees in a seasonal industry is another major issue landscapers tackle on a yearly basis. Thirty-two percent report losing a significant amount of staff members over the past year. To boost retention, businesses are increasing wages, creating employee bonus systems, and emphasizing career development.
Landscaping Crew Wages Are On The Rise
Landscape business owners are digging deeper into their budgets to retain staff as wage increases creep up across all industries. Seventy-six percent say that their business offered raises across the board to all employees, and 23% believe they gave significant raises to all employees.
To stop the mass exodus of skilled trades workers in the industry, landscape business owners are offering increasingly competitive wages and offering bonuses. Eighty percent of those surveyed have a bonus program in place for their employees. Calculated wage increases and bonus systems are a fantastic way to help increase retention and boost morale, but it needs to be calculated through a strong understanding of their business’ financial numbers to stay profitable.
Expect wages across North America to continue to rise if you intend to continue scaling up your business. IBIS World forecasts a 3% rise in wages over the next 5 years in the landscaping industry as wages remain a major challenge for the green industry when attracting and retaining talent. To adapt to rising labor costs, take the time to set and analyze your budget, properly job cost, estimate for profitable work, train and develop your crew members, and monitor efficiency metrics. If you understand your numbers, you will be able to adapt to the rising costs of labor.
Download The 2023 Landscaping Industry Trends Report
These are only a handful of the insights and trends discovered within the landscaping industry for 2023. Download the full 2023 Landscaping Industry Trends Report to learn how other businesses are budgeting for profitability, how other businesses build a bonus system for crew wages, why rookie landscapers aren’t developing and training fast enough, and how landscape business owners spend their work time weekly.
If you want to learn how to boost profitability within your green industry business, you can reach out to one of our LMN Experts for a demo for LMN’s industry leading landscaping software.